


Ordinary summer

by Leonine99



Category: Dawson's Creek
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:07:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28047420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonine99/pseuds/Leonine99
Summary: When Pacey sails away on True Love, Joey remains behind, determined to have a summer just like any other.
Relationships: Joey Potter/Pacey Witter
Kudos: 24





	Ordinary summer

It’s an ordinary summer in a lot of ways. It’s hot, for starters, and the mud flats smell as they always have when the tide goes out and the sun beats down on the shellfish and the weed and the thick black mud, cooking up a smell you forget until the first hot day reminds you. The creek that feeds into the flats flows the same, the splinters in the oars are the same, the rowboat just as creaky, although the distance across to Dawson’s place feels too short sometimes. Like it’s too easy to get back there. Like it should be harder. Work is the same as always and Dawson is her best friend again, nothing more, his smile the same as always, his laugh the same as always, and hers is too she thinks, even when he holds her gaze after the joke is over and it feels weird to keep smiling but she does. Or anyway if she’s not the same, exactly, she’s like the summer, close enough to how she’s always been, close enough to overlap in most ways with ordinary.

The B&B is busy, that’s one thing new this summer, and Joey’s sister Bessie is stressed but she’s happy too. Optimistic. Irritatingly so, even when there’s hardly enough time between guests leaving to change the sheets and clean the bathroom before the next lot arrives. The only cloud on Bessie’s horizon is Joey. Something about Joey’s face seems to bother Bessie. She’s always at her.

“Shouldn’t you be relieved?” is what she says in the first week of summer, after Pacey has sailed off into the sunset, supposedly taking all the will-they-won’t-they forbidden love angst with him. Later, when it becomes obvious Pacey has left at least some of the angst behind, Bessie starts to say things like, “We all make mistakes.”

That’s what Bessie is saying now, standing in the doorway before lunch, holding a bag to take outside to the trash while Joey scrubs the bath. 

“So you made the wrong decision. Nothing’s set in stone. It’s not like he never screwed up. Of all people, he’ll understand.”

“What wrong decision?” Joey says. 

“Joey,” Bess says.

“There’s no wrong decision.”

Joey keeps scrubbing, and Bessie, Bessie sighs and takes out the trash. Now that’s different, that’s out of the ordinary. Joey’s used to pulling against Bessie, insisting on her own point of view while Bessie insists on hers, but now that Bessie won’t pull back the whole argument lands in Joey’s lap, her side and Bessie’s side too. The side that says, you messed up but it’s ok; the side that says, people leave, that’s what they do, he’s no different, would have happened soon enough anyway, Dawson’s the only one who stays, always has been. Her argument, Bessie’s argument, they get all tangled up but Joey’s fingers keep gripping the scrubbing brush, her arm moves back and forward, the sugar soap streaks the bath blue, after a while her shoulder aches. These are normal feelings.

“Jeez, Joey, there won’t be any enamel left on that thing,” Bessie says, back in the bathroom suddenly. 

“This is a five-star cleaning job,” Joey says. “This is a glowing review waiting to happen.”

Bessie reminds her of it later, when the boy who checks in with his parents won’t stop staring at Joey. He looks to be Joey’s age, maybe a little older, and he’s cute, no denying it, corduroy pants and converse, slim paperback in the back pocket, hair dark and floppy. He stands there, an ironic half-smile on his face, throughout the flurry of explanations from his mother about why the booking for a romantic weekend suddenly needs a trundle bed, raising an eyebrow at Joey like she’s in on the joke, whatever the joke is, his family probably.

“Now that’s a glowing review waiting to happen,” Bessie says when they’ve handed over the keys and the complimentary bottle of sparkling, and dragged a fold-out bed up from the basement. “Little Joey’s got another admirer."

Joey rolls her eyes.

“You need me here later?” she says. “I thought I might go hang with Dawson.” 

“What exactly kind of hanging are you two doing anyway?” Bessie says. 

“Like bats,” Joey says. “We hang like bats.”

"Yeah, rabid," Bessie says, and Joey pretends to bite her arm. 

It’s an ordinary summer. For instance, Joey’s been babysitting her nephew whom she loves, now more than ever. It feels weird to babysit him alone, Pacey was over so often this year that she’s gotten used to having company, but then she’s also gotten used to that pain you get in your chest, the tightness that comes from missing someone. When her Mom died, Joey didn’t think she could survive it, but she did. That’s what she means about the summer being ordinary: there are differences, she’d be delusional to deny it, but they follow a through-line already established. Case in point: after dinner and dishes and putting Alexander in bed so Bessie can get started on the accounting, Joey rows across the creek and climbs in through Dawson’s window just like she has in summers past. He’s the one who chooses the movie they watch, same as always. A classic tonight, Vertigo. If she feels her stomach churn when his knee falls against her thigh as he leans towards the screen with an opinion or just caught up in the rising tension of the third act, well, she hasn’t felt comfortable in his bed for years now, has she? It’s normal to feel like she’s wound a little too tight, and this new feeling—that she might scream if he touches her on purpose, if he turns to her after the credits roll and says, you chose me and he sailed off into the sunset alone, so now what, soulmate? Now what?—is just a new twist on that.

He doesn’t say it. He must be thinking it but he doesn’t say it. That’s out of the ordinary. That’s not a normal part of summer: for Dawson to hold a thought in his head without articulating it, without prodding at it with words from every angle. She keeps things to herself too but no one expects her to spill her guts. For instance, she hasn’t told anyone about the dream. She’s had it all summer, the same every night. The boy who looks like Pacey on the boat that looks like True Love: Pacey with his eyes closed and a smile on his face, a smile she knows. His long body laid out in the hammock, rocking gently. Heats her up same as afternoon sunshine, that smile, that long body, and that’s a new feeling for her this summer, turning over in bed, the heat coming in through the window meeting the heat under her skin. It’s almost a relief at first, in the dream, when the wind picks up, cool like before a storm, and the waves slap against the side of the boat and the hammock rocks a little harder and Pacey turns in his sleep too, still smiling. It is a relief, until the waves rise higher and the boat begins to pitch. 

“That ending,” Dawson says. “You know it’s coming but every time it gets you. It’s dizzying you know, exactly like the title says.” 

He’s talking about the movie but Joey is with the dream still, the way the waves heave around the little boat every night, crash over the prow, take Pacey and his smile and his long, loose body down into the deep.

In the here and now, Dawson is looking at her expectantly; he’s obviously asked a question. 

“I didn’t like that movie,” Joey says, and it’s true, she realises. “I didn’t like how it was evil of her to have her own motivations. I didn’t like how she was punished for it. Madeline. She was just doing the best she could.”

“Who?” says Dawson.

“The woman,” Joey says. “Madeline.”

“That’s not her name,” Dawson says. “The whole point of the movie is, that’s not her name.”

Joey stares at him.

“Were you paying any attention at all? None? That’s criminal. We should watch it again. I’ll just rewind the whole thing—”

“Don’t rewind it,” Joey says.

“I don’t mind. The shots are just—God, it’s amazing. You have to see it, Jo. It’s opened up my mind to—”

“The thing is, Dawson, there’s this guy,” Joey says, surprising herself. “There’s this guy at the B&B. I told him I’d hang out with him later, so I better, you know—”

Dawson laughs.

“You’re kidding right?”

Joey gets up off the bed.

“He’s um, he’s reading this Russian writer, Gogol, and I just think that’s really interesting and so when he asked I said, yeah, I said yeah, sure, let’s hang out.”

“Joey, you’re kidding.”

She looks down at her feet.

“Sometimes you just like someone’s smile,” she says.

What she’s thinking is: I’m lying. I’m lying to my best friend. 

Dawson’s face twists.

“You should have just gone with Pacey,” he says. “If you’re not going to be here with me, why didn’t you just go with him?”

“I guess I’m finding out,” she says, mildly for her, which only seems to aggravate Dawson further. “That’s what the summer is for, anyway. From my perspective.”

When she gets back to the B&B the guy with the smile and the trundle bed is out on the deck, as if what she’d told Dawson were true and he really was waiting for her. Like they had a date or something. 

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” she echoes, ducking her head in embarrassment, before recalling that he can’t possibly know that she’s just lied about him to her best friend.

“I’m Matt,” he says.

“Joey,” she says. “You don’t happen to—no, never mind.”

“What?” he says.

“You don’t happen to have an opinion on Vertigo, do you?”

“Film or condition?” he says.

“Film.”

“No opinion,” he says. “I’m more of a reader than a movie buff.”

“Got it,” she says. “Well, goodnight then.”

"You got an opinion on Vertigo?" he says.

"Yeah, it sucks," she says, shortly, as if that announcement were all she wanted out of this interaction.

“Don’t leave me here,” he says. “I mean, my parents have asked for some privacy—”

“They haven’t,” Joey says, taken aback.

“True story. And if I’m here by myself I’ll wonder why, I’ll imagine what they’re doing—”

“God,” Joey says. “God, that’s horrible.”

“Yeah,” he says. “So I was thinking you could maybe show me around. Maybe, there’s somewhere to walk or—”

It’s true she likes his smile. 

“You any good at rowing?” she says.

“Hopeless,” he says.

She likes that. She laughs. She walks him to the creek and gets back into the boat for the second time that night. 

Midges buzz around their bare arms.

“I don’t have any vests. You can swim, right?” she says.

“No rocks in my pockets tonight,” he says.

They sit opposite one another, oars held loosely in her hands, craning their heads back to see the stars above the water, between the trees. The wind is sighing in the branches and that’s it, that’s all there is to hear unless one of them speaks.

“This place is beautiful,” he says. “You’re lucky.”

Joey snorts.

“Seriously,” he says. “This is the nicest thing I’ve done in a long time. This is a nice night. Completely unexpected. Romantic, if I can throw that word around without you throwing me out of the boat.”

“I like your smile,” Joey says. “That’s why I brought you.”

And then, before he can get any ideas: “My friend is on a boat, sailing the Keys. My best friend. Pacey, his name is.”

“Hemingway fan?” the guy says.

“Not really,” she says. “He’s more—he’s the person you’d write the story about. You know? He’s not the writer he’s the—”

“Love interest?”

“I was going to say hero.”

“But love interest works?”

“Maybe,” she says. “Not really. Not anymore. You look like him.”

“Do I?”

“The smile,” she says. And then, dropping her face into her hands: “Oh God, sorry. God. I had a fight with my other best friend tonight. I told him I don’t like Vertigo—”

“No one likes vertigo—”

“The film, dummy—”

“That has a slightly better reputation—”

“But really what I mean is I don’t like him. I’m mad at him.”

“And you’re here with me because—Actually, don’t answer that. It doesn’t matter, does it? The over-supply of best friends, the love triangle between you, me and sailor boy--”

Joey’s laughing now, she kicks out at him and he yelps, makes a show of grabbing his leg.

“Watch it. We’re not all Hemingway types,” he says, and then, while she’s still laughing, he leans back further and points out constellations to her, completely made up, Hitchcock’s Love Handle and The Moon Also Rises, Smile Reminiscent of a Better Smile, Parents At It Like Rabbits.

When Joey finally gets it together, she says, “Speaking of bunnies, do you think your parents have, um finished up?”

“Yeah, probably. So you can row me back, Galahad. Or Guinevere, whoever you are.”

They linger together on the deck, as though there’s some magic word or gesture that will complete the evening.

“I was about to light a cigarette before you came home,” he says. “Thought you wouldn’t be into it so I kept them hidden. Did I get that wrong?”

“No,” she says.

"Right," he says.

Before it can all disolve into awkwardness, she stands on tip-toe and kisses him once, on the lips. He gives her the smile again, the one she loves, only it’s clear now how different his smile is from Pacey’s: how it’s quick and bright while Pacey’s smiles, his very best smiles, are warm and slow.

“That a mistake?” he says.

“No,” she says. “Just a goodnight.”

And then she goes in, and goes to bed. She tosses and turns for a while in the heat, waiting for guilt or regret to sink her but it doesn’t come. When she pictures Dawson watching her little moonlight adventure, his face is twisted and snarling. Pacey, in her mind at least, gives her a grin. 

"Josephine Potter," he says. "That poor boy didn't stand a chance."

Eventually she falls asleep. As always, she dreams of Pacey and True Love but this time she’s on the hammock with him, she’s kissing him, her long limbs are stretched out along his. The wind changes, the waves come up, the sea rises higher and higher but when they go under together it’s not like drowning at all, it’s something different entirely, a new season blooming on the surface of her skin, a slower, brighter heat to his smile.


End file.
